Deepak chopra brings one woman’s manifesting journey full circle | members only

_This is the fourth installment in a series. Read Melina Bellows’ first column, which covers her introduction to manifestation, __here__. Read her second column, which reveals how she dealt

with her first manifestation challenge, __here__. Read her third column, which touches on some of the lessons she’s learned, __here__._ After six months of a deep dive into manifestation, I

had come to believe that it was about thinking the right thoughts, setting clear intentions and waiting for the universe to deliver. But Deepak Chopra, 78, had other ideas. “The law of

attraction is total nonsense,” the best-selling author and self-help guru recently told me over Zoom. (He was referring to the New Age concept that positive thoughts attract positive

experiences.) “Manifesting your best life is simpler than all these people make it out to be.” Wait — what? The man whose name is synonymous with manifestation, dismissing the law of

attraction? Chopra talked to me from Arizona’s Canyon Ranch wellness resort, where he was leading a retreat focused on his latest book, _Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual

Intelligence and Personal Well-Being_. I sat at my desk, pen in hand, in case I didn’t hit the record button correctly — because if there was ever a time to capture wisdom in real-time, this

was it. "Digital Dharma: How AI Can Elevate Spiritual Intelligence and Personal Well-Being" is self-help guru Deepak Chopra's latest book. Random House As far as I understood

it, I told him there seemed to be two schools of thought about manifestation: one rooted in neuroscience, the other in spirituality — or, as skeptics might say, magic. So which was it?

“It’s both,” Chopra says. “But you have to understand that neuroscience alone cannot explain experience.” He went on to explain what he calls the hard problem of consciousness — the idea

that the brain isn’t the source of consciousness, but rather a tool that processes experience. “Think of your brain like your computer desktop — it organizes and interprets awareness, but it

doesn’t create it,” he said. “And you don’t have to know how a computer works to use it.” According to Chopra, what blocks us from manifesting our best lives is the conditioned mind — a

kind of biological autopilot that filters experiences in ways that keep us stuck. “Your mind, your body and the world around you are all manifestations of your awareness,” he said. “If you

change your awareness, you change your reality.” In other words, we need to learn to bypass the conditioned mind.